Young v. Biden

Background

The plaintiffs were 181 U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents whose immediate family members had approved immigrant visa petitions. The family members sought immigrant visas so they could complete the visa process and enter the United States to reunite with their families.

President Donald J. Trump issued two proclamations in response to the economic crisis associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Proclamation 10014, issued in April 2020, suspended the entry of certain immigrants, subject to exceptions. Proclamation 10052, issued in June 2020, extended the suspension of immigrant entry through December 31, 2020, and also suspended entry for some temporary nonimmigrant visa holders.

The Department of State interpreted the proclamations as stopping not only entry but also the processing, adjudication, and issuance of affected immigrant visas. Under the State Department’s “Diplomacy Strong” framework, applicants generally had to qualify for an exception to the proclamations and have their cases treated as “mission critical” or an emergency before processing could resume.

Claims and Motions

The plaintiffs alleged that the proclamations exceeded the President’s authority under Section 1182(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. They also alleged that the proclamations violated separation-of-powers principles by overriding Congress’s family-based immigration system and that the Department of State’s implementation violated the Administrative Procedure Act by stopping the processing of otherwise eligible immigrant visa applications.

The plaintiffs moved for a preliminary injunction, which is temporary relief issued before a final judgment when the requirements for that relief are met. The defendants moved to transfer the case to the District Court for the District of Columbia under the first-to-file rule, a doctrine that can allow a court to pause or transfer a later-filed case involving substantially similar parties and issues. In the alternative, defendants sought transfer under the federal venue statute or a stay.

Transfer Motion

The court denied the motion to transfer. It agreed that the earlier-filed related case challenged the same proclamations under some of the same legal theories and involved some of the same visa categories. But the court found important differences: none of the named plaintiffs overlapped, no class had been certified that included the plaintiffs in Young, this case involved 181 individual plaintiffs, and this case focused exclusively on immigrant visas while the earlier case primarily concerned nonimmigrant visas.

The court also considered that many plaintiffs resided in California, that another Northern District of California decision had addressed related issues, and that the government’s differing positions about transfer suggested that forum shopping may have influenced its request. The court concluded that transferring the case would impose a burden and declined to apply the first-to-file rule.

Standing

The court held that the plaintiffs had standing, meaning they had shown a legally sufficient injury connected to the defendants’ actions that a court could address. The alleged injury was the complete freeze of their beneficiaries’ immigrant visa applications, causing delay beyond pandemic-related resource limitations.

The court found that the injury was traceable to the defendants because the President issued the proclamations, the Secretary of State directed the Department of State’s visa operations, and the Secretary of Homeland Security was responsible for implementing the proclamations with the Secretary of State. The court also found that an injunction could better protect the plaintiffs’ interests even if pandemic-related backlogs and operating limits continued.

Preliminary-Injunction Analysis

The court applied the traditional preliminary-injunction factors: likelihood of success or serious questions on the merits, likely irreparable harm without relief, the balance of hardships, and the public interest. Under the Ninth Circuit’s sliding-scale approach, a plaintiff who raises serious questions may obtain an injunction if the balance of hardships sharply favors the plaintiff and the other requirements are met.

The court found irreparable harm from the withholding or unreasonable delay of family-based immigrant visa processing, including prolonged family separation, emotional harm, and the risk that 17 beneficiaries would age out of their visa categories. The court explained that some children could permanently lose the ability to immigrate under their approved petitions if they turned 21 before processing was completed.

The court found that the balance of hardships and the public interest favored the plaintiffs. It concluded that the Department of State could process the plaintiffs’ applications while still accounting for pandemic-related limits, resource constraints, and country conditions. The court found that the plaintiffs faced substantial hardship from continued delays, while the government’s hardship could be limited through a tailored injunction.

Merits Questions

The court found that the plaintiffs raised serious constitutional questions about whether the President had exceeded his authority under Section 1182(f). The court distinguished the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. Hawaii, which involved foreign-policy and national-security rationales. In contrast, the court viewed the proclamations in Young as based on domestic economic concerns.

The court found that the proclamations’ stated economic justifications did not explain why barring the entry of family-based immigrant visa beneficiaries was necessary or show that these immigrants caused economic harm to U.S. workers. The court also found that the administrative record did not contain evidence of a comparable interagency review concerning family-based immigrant visa beneficiaries.

The court separately found that the plaintiffs raised a substantial Administrative Procedure Act claim. It concluded that the proclamations addressed entry, not the processing and issuance of visas, and that the government had identified no adequate statutory authority allowing the Department of State to categorically stop processing eligible visa applications. The court distinguished visa eligibility from a presidential restriction on entry and concluded that the Department of State’s categorical “No Visa Policy” was not in accordance with law and exceeded statutory authority.

Order and Scope of Relief

Judge Edward M. Chen granted the plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary injunctive relief and denied the defendants’ motion to transfer. The injunction applied only to the plaintiffs’ petitions and was not nationwide. Pending final judgment, defendants and those acting with them were barred from implementing or enforcing Section 1 of Proclamation 10014 and the Department of State’s No-Visa Policy with respect to the plaintiffs.

The order also barred actions that resulted in the non-processing or non-issuance of eligible immigrant visa applications because of Proclamation 10014, as extended by Proclamation 10052, or the No-Visa Policy. Defendants were required to make good-faith efforts to process the plaintiffs’ visas, but embassy personnel, consular officers, and administrative processing centers could still prioritize cases based on pandemic-related resource limits, country conditions, or other stated constraints, so long as those decisions were not based on the proclamations or the No-Visa Policy. The injunction took effect immediately and remained in effect pending trial or further order of the court.